bluebells

 Saturday was Hobby Art day at Costessey with Moira Walters, and we used the new bluebells stamp set.
Moira had some lovely samples, but I had to live up to the rebel reputation and do something different!
Actually this first one is fairly similar to the sample if you take out the background and the sentiment...... the bluebell spray was stamped onto blue card and white embossed before colouring with mica paints. Having just collected my set of inspirational quotes I had to try them out..... I thought this one fitted, so used it to randomly stamp in the background and then white embossed on a strip of blue for the sentiment.

The other cards are very similar, just different inks for stamping. It was supposed to be the quick first card using white embossing and brushos, it ended up taking me most of the day! As the bluebell stamps are small, most people used a butterfly stamp, but I wanted to see if I could make a bluebell wood land scene.
The first time I stamped the bluebells with versamark and white EP before masking with drawing gum and stamping the trees several times in grey versafine and masking them as well. Grey brusho and water across the lot. Snag here once I had rubbed off the masking was that i wasn't too sure what was bluebells and what was tree in some areas! Also the colour I used for the flowers meant that they didn't stand out.
Version two i stamped the bluebells using black versafine and painted them first before masking. The trees were stamped with grey versafine again and masked before adding the grey brusho.
I was much happier with this version, but don't think I will try to do it again, far too fiddly.

playday

Saturday was a Hobby Art day with Moira Walters at Costessey - always great fun and a chance to play with some new stamps!
It does help when you don't just grab kit as you head out the door - but it does work out well sometimes. Yesterday I left my ink dusters behind, and my vital hand scrubby - I really missed the scrubby, as I am sure that ink is magnetically attracted to my hands, no one else seems to end up with as mucky mitts as I do!
On the other hand, what did find their way into the trolley were some brusho backgrounds - having these (and the luxury of not having to share stamp sets due to several regulars being ill) meant I ended up with twice as many cards as anyone else. We used Janie's wildflowers and butterflies stamps, and a sentiment set that was also new to me, plus a rather oriental looking sizzix die and a tonic die to cut the stapper card out.


The first card was inspired by graffiti, and the sentiments were stamped first, then the die cut out. I did ink the background piece for this, and stamped the flower head roughly where the cut out would be. Glued both squares of card together, added the trellis die cut and the butterflies. My inky mitts struck, so the ink smudges were to hide the accidental ones made
when edging the panel with an ink pa



The stepper card was very easy with the die cut, and escaped any mucky pawprints as well!
I inked the flower stamp with both green ,yellow and orange mini ink pads and stamped fairly randomly across the large panel, and once on each side panel, then inked round the edges with the green pad. Sentiment stamped in green across the bottom panel.  The butterfly was stamped onto a piece of the brushoed card, cut out and glittered then gluied at an angle across the front panel.

Having escaped fingerprints once, I got them with a vengeance for this card, despite starting with relatively clean hands.  Somehow, having cut the base card out of A3 card, I ended up with  black smudges right on the edges of the 7"sqaure card. So I went with a moody card instead of cheerful and bright! Inked the card with black soot distress ink all over, then round the edges with black versafine, then stamped along the bottom with flowers using black soot.
I edged the circle die cut with black soot, stamped the wildflowers using iced spruce , then the sentiment and butterflies in black versafine. Four colours of glitter on the butterflies to add some brightness.

 Extras using the brusho card for the backgrounds and the butterflies. Made the toppers up on the day for all these finished off later with stickles on the butterflies.










Using the brusho card as background, stamping two wildflower stamps across the base, inked in green and purple inks. Butterfly stamped onto more brusho card, cut out and clear glittered.

Last card used had background of distress oxides, then the flower head stamped using green and red inks' Butterfly coloured with pencils

Hobby Art again

 Yesterday I spent at Moira's last Hobby Art workshop for this year, and these are the results.
Ozzy owl gatefold card has a band to hold it closed, but I left mine plain - still thinking of adding something to the currently plain front panels, too.








I changed the stamps for this one, as I needed a sympathy card, but kept the gatefold layout. I used leaf stamps inked with orange and green inks for the front panels and inner background - I pulled the colour out with a damp brush on the front panels, and stamped the same leaf on spare card with black ink and coloured using the same inks I stamped with, cut out and added to the sentiment panel.
The inside panel used poppy head and poppy stamps, coloured with promarkers. The poppy stamp was masked several times to create the foreground, and the seed heads were stamped while the masks were in place.

 Moira's sample pop-up card used the mice stamps, but as I had an unused set of nativity stamps from last month I used those instead.
In hindsight, I should have cut a smaller step, as the nativity scene take sup less room than a mouse choir.

 Last two cards used a penguin stamp, with my version of icicles - stream stamp on it's side!- and a flourish for the background.
I used the remnants of the backing mat of the first card to stamp the penguins again for a second card -  should have used a brighter colour for the letters though, as they don't stand out even with sparkle added.On the other hand, the white marker pen did actually work fairly well, as did the blue stickles glitter added on the base with screwed up baby wipe.

Hobby Art with Moira

Sunday was the second of  Moira's Hobby Art workshops, this time at a new venue at Costessey  - lovely light hall, plenty of parking, and best of all a caretaker to put tables and chairs out, and away!
We did 3 cards, all using Christmas stamps,
The first one used the bauble stamps - baubles were stamped in black on white card, coloured in (glittered if wished), cut out and mounted behind the circle aperture with its acetate centre.
I cheated and brushed wild honey distress ink all over my stamped baubles, which drastically reduced the colouring, and chose to mount mine onto black, adding the strings with a gold metallic market, which I also added to the bauble tops. The edges of the aperture were stamped with the holly sprig first, using memento london fog ink, and coloured with iced sprice distress ink for the leaves and marker open for the berries.
Not a quick card, but a very effective one.
Our second card used a snow globe die, and a pre-embossed snowflake background. I chose to use the mice for my image - just love that choirmouse- stamped twice with the central one stamped onto extra card, cut out and glued in the middle of the first two after colouring with promarkers.
Background,  the base card and the edges of the globe were all sponged with broken china distress ink.

The last card took rather longer to do, involving stamping the word in black ink, colouring in with promarkers, with a bit of liquid pearls on the berries. I used iced spruce distress ink to stamp and roughly colour the pine sprigs on the background card, and also brushed some round the wedges. Two narrow mats of red card, and a couple of holly sprigs finished it off

This one I did mostly last night - had the idea yesterday and started it then. Snowflake stamps randomly stamped across the black card using white pigment ink, which dried rather paler than I had hoped - one day i will find a really good white inkpad,  there must be one somewhere!-
with lots of glitter highlights using clear glitter and a quickie glue pen.
father Christmas was stamped in black onto white card, coloured with promarkers and cut out. Once he was glued onto the starry card, I added white fluffy stuff onto all the fur and heated it to give a bit of dimension, and some glitter onto the lantern.

Sunday at Gissing

 another Sunday afternoon at Gissing with Moira, Janet, Jill and Barbara in a toasty warm hall despite the dull weather outside.
Moira had a Christmas version of this owl card, which involved using practically every Christmassy Hobby Art stamp set she could lay her hands on, and a heck of a lot of cutting out. I thought I had a bright idea using different stamps, then found I didn't have them with me...............but I did have the set of leaf stamps.
I stamped the leaf onto green and orange card, added more colouring using sponges and distress inks and cut them out.
Moira had kindly provided the embossed square and its backing card, so I just added the owls in the hole and scattered the leaves down the left hand side. The white base card was randomly stamped with the leaf stamp in greens and sponged over with vintage photo distress inks.
 Janet's sample card was very simple, with the Claritystamp tree stamped in black and decorated with dots of  Paper Artsy fresco paint added with an embossing tool. Background layer was  from an old paper pad.
I had a quick play with the new stamp of the month from Hobby Art before packing up - a very quick card, took longer to finish up at home than to do! Masked off the central stripe with paper, brushed blue and green distress inks across it, then stamped the seed heads twice down the left and coloured the leaves in with marker pen.
Sentiment added later from some magazine freebie stamps, and base black card.
The random grey splodges are from the scanner, which obviously needs a good clean again!

Christmas starts here..........

Yesterday was the regular monthly get-together at Gissing - due to holidays, it was definitely a case of quality over quantity, and the four of us did rather rattle around in the hall! It did mean that we got a whole table each to spread our stuff out, and we had a very pleasant time drinking coffee, eating cake and even doing some stamping!
Moira brought her new Christmas stamps from Hobby Art for us to play with - it didn't feel quite right making Christmas cards on a hot sunny day, but we managed. After last month's Clarity workshop, I now have 5 cards, which is already way more than at this time last year...........
I stamped the large greeting using Memento white ink onto black card, trimmed it down and added glitter with a glue pen. It was mounted onto silver card, which doesn't show up in the scan, then onto a base stamped using snowflakes and distress ink in broken china, milled lavender and iced spruce. Those colours didn't quite work out, so a quick sponge round the edges with more broken china to do a rescue job before mounting the panel on top.


The smaller Noel stamp from the same set as the first stamp was stamped in black versafine and coloured with watercolour pencils, as was the bird from the same set. Background card was randomly stamped with the holly swirl from the penguin set from last year, which was also coloured with pencils before more sponging with broken china.Another silver matt - I have managed to cut a bit off the left hand edge of this card scanning it, the topper is actually central!








The last card used the new Father Christmas stamp, this time coloured with distress inks, and a lot of glitter over the furry bits. Another snowflake background, this time stamped using a  multicoloured ink pad in blues and purples.
A silver matt again, and a diecut snowflake also in silver to finish him off (Memory Box die).

poppy easel

This is the poppy easel card I made at Gissing last Sunday  starting from an idea by Moira Walters, using Hobby Art poppy stamps.
I used both stamps in the set instead of just the smaller one - just had to be different!
The base card is a 6x6 square  white card.
I stamped the larger poppy stamp across the centre of a piece of 6x6 white card, using black versafine. The poppies were coloured with distress inks in spiced marmalade and brick red, with peeled paint for the leaves, using a waterbrush. I added a fairly random wash of green and orange across the card to try to give the impression of more poppies in the background. I stamped the smaller image several times, coloured the flowers to match, then cut out the flowers and arranged them across the front of the stamped image. Fussy cut round the top of the image.
Stamped the smaller image again, and coloured to match the first image, then fussy cut round the top and sides, leaving a flap at the bottom so that it would stand up.
The tricky bit is placing this so that it forms the stop for the easel bit, but low enough down the base that the card will still fold flat. Moira had worked out how to hide the flap, which worked brilliantly - a piece of green card in my case, cut slightly smaller to fit inside the card. Place the stop piece in position, check the card will still fold, then mark where you want it on the base piece - cut a slit in said base piece, insert the stop and glue it down; then glue the base to the card. Much easier and tidier  then cutting strips of card!

choirmice

I was lucky enough to win a recent Hobby Art challenge, and  one of my prize stamp sets was the new Have a very mice Christmas set.
I loved the little choir mouse, and set about making a choir up - after trying masking I just stamped, coloured and fussy cut them out - their tails really got in the way using masks!
The background stamp is from Chocolate Baroque, part of the gothic fragments set. I used kraft card as a base as that was stonewall coloured, and drew in a few extra stones for the wall, so I was pleased to see that the latest challenge on 52cc was to use kraft card! Not often that something matches up so well with a challenge.........................
I used bleach on the windows, and quite liked the pinky effect so didn't add any extra colour to the glass bits.

Diva Red Saturday

I  had a lovely day crafting on Saturday with Janet and Moira, don't often get to the Saturday workshops, but managed this one at the last minute.
The cards are not in the order we did them, and a couple got finished off at home the next day.
Janet brought some of her collection of Claritystamps and stencils, and the owls were a recent addition. We stamped the owl in place first, then brushed ink through the stencil - Janet had traced round all the letters with a fine line pen, carefully making some lie over/under others, but I thought it looked ok without, so left it as it was.
The owl was stamped onto 3 different coloured papers and paper pieced over the stamped image, and I coloured his beak and legs in with marker pens. The greeting from the word chain series was stamped onto a separate bit of white card, sponged round the edges and fitted under the tail of the owl.
A mat of black card finished it off.
I had originally done two different colourways to see which I liked better, so finished the second one off later. this time I did go round the edges of the letters, rather wobbly effect on some of them!
The owl was coloured with pencils, and I had to cut round his tail to slip the greeting underneath. This time I trimmed the stencil right to the edges, matted onto brown card and onto a smaller plain square card.

 We also used the other stamp in the set - again stamped first, then the background inks brushed through the arch stencil before colouring the owls in with pencils. A double mat, this time orange and brown.









Moira used her favourite Hobby Art stamps, and started with a small card with a fancy fold out insert spotted on facebook.
The insert had to be made first from a square of patterned paper, as the finished size of this decided the size of the finished card.
I found a sheet with a calligraphy design that I rather liked, but it looked very dull once folded, so I started to brighten it up........
                                                                                     I stamped a leaf four times into the centre, and four small butterflies directly onto the paper, then two large butterflies onto card, which I cut out once coloured with pens and glued over leaves.I think I have worked out how to add them dangling from acetate if i try this again.....
I cut a base card from black card, added red mats to the inside before gluing the folded paper in.
For the cover I stamped a script stamp and the same leaf stamp using distress ink (wild honey?) , added another cut out butterfly and the word stamp - red mat was hand cut, and not very accurately as it turned out!

I was much happier with the last card we did, using brushos - the first time I hadn't taken my brushos with me, too! Base card and the main mat were stamped with a script stamp using broken china distress ink, then brushed with peeled paint and more broken china - the narrow mats are black.
The last one was finished off today, I made a brusho background onto water colour paper, trying to remember which blue I had used - I knew the green was leaf , and finally went for prussian blue instead of the cobalt I normally use. Mat in this case is dark green.

Hobby Art with Moira

The first Hobby Art workshop run by Moira was at Bawburgh today , with a seaside theme to go with the lovely sunny day outside. These are the cards I made.
The first one took a fair time to do, despite Moira having diecut the Crealies patchwork pieces in advance.
Being awkward, I used the fishing set - a few other awkward ones used the lavender or birds sets, though some did do as told and used the seaside stamps!
I edged all the pieces with bundles sage distress ink, and stamped the netting in sage to make the backgrounds.tree and rush stamps behind the fisherman were also stamped in sage, everything else was in black versafine ink.
My fisherman was coloured with marker pens, then fussy cut out - at this point I did regret using this set!- and stuck on using small foam pads.

I should really have been more careful before I stuck things down and changed the base round so that the larger pieces were on the right - I think the fisherman would have been better  balanced on the right.

 Our second card was an easel card, with the wall and beach huts forming the stop. I cheated and used brushes and sponges with distress inks to make my basic backgrounds, with the addition of some sand brusho powder on top of the distress ink for the sand. Moira's version used distress inks and a lot of spritzing with water and mopping up ink for her backgrounds, which took a fair time to dry.
The wall and the seagull  was cut out and glued onto a folded strip of card to form the stop, then the beach huts were glued on behind the wall.

The final card used some coloured glassine paper over coloured card to give the watery effect. The small seahorses and the weeds were stamped onto the base blue card before the glassine was added, rest of the images were stamped onto white card, coloured with marker pens and fussy cut out. Weeds and fish were glued straight onto the glassine, then the aperture card glued over the top.
One starfish was glued straight onto the card overlapping the aperture, the second and the seahorse were added with foam pads.

brusho poppies

 have been playing with the new poppy stamps from Hobby Art and my brushos, and these are the results so far.
For both cards I stamped the images first in black memento on white card for the square and multimedia paper for the oblong. Both pieces were sprinkled with the same brusho colours - brilliant red, leaf green and yellow - and heavily spritzed with water. I spread some of the red out with a paint brush where it didn't spread by itself to cover the poppy heads.
The effect on the multimedia card is far smoother and more diffuse, and the card itself didn't curl up, so I think I will be using it more often now .
The same poppy stamp was inked with marker pens and spritzed with water before stamping to form the background on the 6x6 square card, and the main image was matted onto black.

Matted onto black again, and also onto a matching red card then onto a 5x7 white
 base card

The theme for the Hobby Art challenge this month is seaside, so this is my effort using my one and only seaside stamp -sorry for the slightly squiffy scan, scanner is playing idiot at the moment and refusing to show the white border unless I back the card with another colour to scan it and crop it later....
Anyhow, i used the harbour stamp, in black versafine onto multimedia card and clear embossed. A circle mask for the moon, then brushed chipped sapphire and black soot distress inks across the sky, and the main part of the image.
I darkened parts of the scene with karisma pencils in indigo and black, using a promarker blender pen to spread the colours round a bit and smooth them out. White pencil to highlight the houses, then matted onto black, silver and blue card.

birds n brusho

 finally got around to finishing off the threatened extra birds using the Hobby Art stamps that I started at Gissing - seems ages ago now!
This is the companion stamp to the one we originally used, and I have to admit that I much prefer this version.
The birds were stamped first with black versafine, and then I started playing with the brushos. The texture in some places is due to the amount of water I was using on ordinary smooth card - did sometimes make it more difficult colouring in. Next time I must remember to colour first, then add the brusho!
 On all of the cards I used the same stamp randomly to create the background - just stamped in slate grey for the swing card, leaves coloured using a blender pen and more ink sponged round the edges.

The other two cards, stamped with versamark , clear embossed, then sponged with distress ink in broken chine and peeled paint.

Sunday at Gissing

 Some of the cards from last Sunday at Gissing playing with Moira's Hobby Art stamps and Janet's Claritystamps - always a lovely time with crafty friends, , different stamps to play with , plenty of coffee,  cake and chat - what more could you want? One day I will actually remember to take a photo of all our cards, they all come out totally different!
This first one was right up my street, and uses distress inks, promarkers  to colour the larger leaves in , Hobby Art reeds and grasses stamp. Moira's sample version also used one of the birds - I left the bird out but stamped the feathery grass twice instead. I splashed water over the bottom part of the card and blotted it to try to give a watery effect






Being on a brusho kick at the moment I did a different more CAS version - I got the stamps first, so had time to play while everyone else caught up with all the inking for the background

Janet's sample used the new shepherds purse stamp from Claritystamp, with a masked and inked panel background done first.
I did two versions, one using distress inks and the stamp randomly stamped in a slightly darker yellow across the panel before removing all the masking tape and stamping the flower again in black archival ink across the panel. A wavy line round the edge of the panel and the flowers bleached out where they crossed the inked panel.
Second version used the brusho powders for the background, had to be careful not to over spritz the water to make sure the colour didn't seep under the masking tape.